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Saturday, October 1, 2011

The Mayoral and County Executive Funding Races Through 09.30. 2011 : Part I

Last night I downloaded the Bellingham Mayoral and Whatcom County Executive funding data from the PDC (through September 30,2011?). I sorted the "cash contributions" of funding of each candidate by amount, count, and "populist ratio" (a synthetic statistic). You will have to click on the image below to enlarge. The spreadsheet data for this blog post can be found here.

The clear winner in the 'funding race' at this point is Kelli Linville. Although Dan Pike closely trails her in "raised funds", Linville's "cash contributions" total and total count of "cash contributions" exceed Pike's substantially. I counted donations of $500 or more and $100 or less for all candidates. I then created a "synthetic ratio" by subtracting from the count of all donations under $100 or less, the count of all donations $500 or more. (Here I assume that the count of donations $100 or less indicates "a populist draw" and that the count of all donations $500 or more indicates something less than that.) I divided that result by the average donation per candidate to create a "populist" ratio as shown in the far right graphic above. Under this criteria, Linville just flattens that rest of the field as the total count of her "cash contributions" is 516 to Pike's 284. Her contributions of $100 or less lead Pike 417 to 193, probably indicating widespread support. You can also look at the strength and width of her donor base by viewing points of individual donations over time in the graphic below. Pike's early lead in funding just dries up once the Linville 'machine' catches stride:

Through end of September; Donations over Time

The county executive funding race trails the mayoral funding race with the exception of Jack Louws amazing ability to draw donations over $500 dollars. 41 (26%) of Mr. Louws 156 donations are over $500. No one else comes close to this percentage. I suspect that Doug Ericksen's campaign is in trouble. His "cash contributions" are exceptionally low when compared with the other candidates and I cannot make his numbers for "all sources" total correctly. Unless he receives substantial funding in October he will probably fall far short of Mr. Louws' total of "raised funds".

It is a divided "funding race". The two Democrats running for Bellingham mayoral have 800 separate "cash contributions" between them. The two Republicans running for Whatcom county executive have 31% of that total or 251 separate "cash contributions". A total of $185,014.13 has apparently been raised by the four candidates to date, $155,032.44 of which consists of cash contributions from 1,051 donors; many of whom hail from Whatcom County and some of whom do not. (And that, dear reader, will be the subject of my next post.) Send me any thoughts and corrections you may have. I did my best to check these numbers carefully.